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The ROCK OF 
THE MARNE 



A Chronological Story of the 
38th Regiment, (J. S. Infantry 



By 

J. W. WOOLDRIDGE 

Oiptain. 38th U. S. Infantry 
Commanding G Company 



*Price fOCenU 



Copyrighted 1920 by 
J. W. WOOLDRIDGE 




GENERAL U. G. McALEXANDER 
"THE ROCK OF THE MARNE" 



THE ROCK OF THE MARNE 



A Chronological Story of the 38th 
Regiment, United States Infantry 

This story was beg-un while Captain Wooldridge was lying wounded in Colonel Mc- 
Alexander's Headquarters on the Vesle River, August 2-10, 1918.— Editor. 

WHEN two Divisions of German shock troops pile 
up on a regiment of American fighting men, one 
does not need to be gifted in imagination to see 
war in all its ramifications and vicissitudes. 

I admit that to those of us who participated the pic- 
ture as a whole is blurred by proximity while spots are 
multicolored and accentuated into sheets of concen- 
trated lightning. 

The historian of the future will view the battle from 
afar and do much better, particularly as he will not be 
hampered by individual facts. Therefore we shall tell 
you the story and not the history of the 38th's recent 
unpleasantness. 

The scene is laid in that erstwhile heavenly little val- 
ley of the Surmelin which finds its resting place on the 
banks of the River Marne. The semi-mountainous 
ridges that flank this little valley are wooded with what 
the French call trees ; they are tangled with shrubs and 
second growths that make for ideal machine gun nests. 

Down in the bosom of the valley meanders the Sur- 
melin river, so called we presume because the French do 
not know our word "crick." It is a heavily foliaged 
creek; its value we f:rst recognized in its production of 
trout through the agency of the festive "OF" grenade 
tossed into its tiny pools. 

This valley is a series of golden wheat fields and gar- 
den patches. Not fi.elds as you know them but as the 



French crofter laboriously cultivates by hand to the 
limits of one man's activities— small, though profuse, 
spots of shining cereal decorated resplendently with 
carmine red poppies. 

The maps show this valley to be the gateway to Paris 
— that is, from the farthest point of the second German 
drive to the Marne. Would you call it the 38th's good 
fortune to be given this gateway to defend ? Anyway, 
the fates so decreed and we were rushed by the fastest 
means possible from our training billets, with French 
beds five feet high, at Arc, Cour le Vecque, and Couprey, 
to stem the tide and thereby block the way to Paris. 

The 38th had made some marches before and has 
since, but none of us will forget when we pulled into the 
woods back of St. Eugene that last day of our trek. We 
had revised the tables of field equipment on the way so 
that when we got there we didn't bother to spread our 
blankets. We simply laid down and hoped in a maud- 
lin, disconnected way one of the shells the Germans wel- 
comed us with would make a direct hit and end it all. 

The Colonel was right there ahead of us. Nobody 
ever knows how he does it but he is always ahead of us 
and we have gotten used to a confident feeling of know- 
ing it's all right to go anywhere because the Colonel is 
ahead. He warned us about aeroplane observation and 
gas shells and said, ''Be ready" for orders to move up!" 

We try to think back now to the days when we were 
innocent of high explosives, gas, and aerial bombs. It 
seems like robbing the catacombs to bring up the dim 
pasts of two months ago. We have lived many lifetimes 
and have seen, in those two months, many pass to that 
bourne from whence no traveler returns. 

Our position was taken without delay on the south 
bank of the Marne, which is about fifty yards wide and 
which at that time separated us from the enemy. The 
Colonel gave orders directly opposite to the ''Live and 
Let Live" principle. "Don't let anything alive show 
itself on the other side except those you go over and get 
for information!" 



With the French opposite them the Germans have an 
insulting and cocky way of strolling' about their busi- 
ness in plain view at a few hundred yards. The French 
custom of running themselves ragged trying to hit the 
enemy with a hand grenade did not appeal to us, so we 
became, in the German opinion, disgustingly belligerent 
with our rifles. 

Their movements soon after our advent became sur- 
reptitious and reptilian. So at night we paddled over 
in various nondescript flotillas, dug them out of their 
holes or chased their patrols around a bit — and some- 
times got chased back again somewhat the worse for 
wear. They sprinkled us with H. E.'s and gas and we 
likewise sprinkled them. It was a great game and we 
thrived on it. 

One dark night a patrol of theirs came over right at 
the point of a sentry post of ours. As they reached for 
the bank with a boat hook a Yank accommodatingly 
took hold and pulled them in. He said, "Come on over, 
Fritz. We are waiting for you," and our men proceeded 
to pacify one boat load of misdirected Huns. 

That sort of thing was our daily, or rather nightly, 
ration, until prisoners and intelligence officers began to 
tell a new story. The Boche were preparing for another 
grand offensive and this .time their objective was Paris 
with no stops. 

The Kaiser issued a manifesto : "I will be in Paris by 
midnight of July 17, 1918." In fact, he had arranged a 
supper party there and the stage was being set. 

Diplomacy is the gentle art of telling something 
which is not exactly true to somebody who does not ex- 
actly believe it. Diplomacy was invented to camouflage 
language. At any rate, we suspect the Kaiser of using 
diplomacy with his troops for once and painting a beau- 
tiful word picture of himself, and Gott, and Von Hin- 
denburg, and Ludendorf, not to mention probably the 
Caliph of Bagdad or his friend the Punjab of Teheran, 
sitting at a marble top slab on, the public balcony in 



Paris, wrapping themselves around the foaming seidel 
and fragrant liverwurst. 

With this thing of beauty in their minds his soldiers 
began to stack up "drive impedimenta." Lieutenant 
Murray secured voluminous reports on enemy activity. 
We captured an artillery captain and he affirmed it. At 
night we would hear ''preparation sounds" on the other 
side that fascinated us. 

The French on our right were generous with their 
warnings and made feverish arrangements for some- 
thing or other — we thought at the time it was for bat- 
tle. Aeroplanes and scouts verified this rumor and it 
looked like business. So the whole thing so far as our 
sector was concerned — the Gateway to Paris, the Valley 
of the Surmelin — was put up to the Colonel, U. G. Mc- 
Alexander, who at once proceeded to make hay while 
the making was good. 

''Rowe, you hold the front line with two companies 
of your battalion, don't you?" 

*'Yes, sir, with two companies in their immediate 
support," answered Major Rowe, commander of the 
2nd Battalion. 

"Very well," said the Colonel. "Thicken the lines by 
moving one company up. This will give you three com- 
pany fronts on our sector and your remaining company 
will entrench themselves in echelon formation, so," in- 
dicating on map with pencil marks the exact position 
he wished them in. "They will act in close support on 
the extreme right and also as a right flank guard. The 
weak point on this line is on our right. I don't believe 
the French will be able to hold and I shall arrange my 
regiment to meet that contingency." 

This was a direct statement as usual; no equivoca- 
tion in the Colonel's remarks. But we were all greatly 
surprised, as everybody else had complete confidence in 
the gallantry of the French Division on our right. It 
was our first introduction to the depth of the man in 
his preparation for battle. But for his judgment on 



their inability to hold this would be a requiem, not a 
story. 

The regiment was arranged on advanced and origi- 
nal principles of "formation in depth." The 2nd Bat- 
talion, Major Rowe, as above; then the 1st Battalion, 
Major Keeley, and the 3rd, Major Lough. The Colonel 
looked us over individually and collectively, took a rifle 
to a point near the river in broad daylight, sniped a 
while as though to challenge the enemy, and said, "Let 



'em come.'' 



The evening of July 14th came with a darkness you 
could feel. French crickets cricked in a language we 
could not understand. Night birds winged their uncer- 
tain way in pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. 
Frogs croaked and walked — not hopped^ — after the 
manner of no other frogs on earth. The Y. M. C. A. — 
God bless them! — sent chocolates and cigarettes down 
to the men in the very front lines. The rolling kitchens 
steamed up in preparation of the boys' one hot meal 
per day to be delivered by carrying parties to the front. 
Company commanders made the usual night recon- 
naissance of their positions, chatted with the Lieuten- 
ants and again learned that a plebiscite of the men 
would produce a reiteration of the Colonel's "Let 'em 



come." 



Our artillery lugged over the usual intermittent har- 
assing fire, but the murmuring pines and whispering 
hemlocks went A. W. 0. L. so far as looking out for 
the Germans was concerned. For all the noise they 
made you could hear your eyelashes meet. Their quiet 
finally became ominous and there was a general stiff- 
ening of our cerebral vertebra. 

At exactly 12 o'clock it happened. 

All the demons of hell and its ally, Germany, were 
unleashed in a fierce uproar that transcended all bom- 
bardments of the past. It thundered and rained shells,, 
H. E.'s, shrapnel and gas. They swept our sector as 
with a giant scythe, and as far back as their guns would 
reach. 



For hours that seemed weeks we huddled in our tiny 
splinter proofs or open slit trenches in the horrible con- 
fusion of it all, but we lovingly patted our, as yet, cold 
steel and awaited the second shock we knew would 
come — the shock of bodies, material bodies that we 
could see, feel and fight — something tangible, so that 
we could release our mad lust to kill this great snake 
that was slowly coiling around us, this furious beast 
that was volcanically tearing at our vitals. 

God, what hallucinations under a pounding like that ! 

Yes, we wanted them to come. We wanted anything 
to come that we could see, feel, and fight. We wanted 
to flight, I tell you! Not to lie there on the rocking 
ground with hell crashing and the devils snatching at 
our guts, our eyes, our lungs. 

What was that in our lungs? 

Yes, damn them, Gas ! 

They are not satisfied to drench us at long distances 
with all the steel they can crowd into space but the 
dirty, ghoulish, primeval Hun, racks his warped and 
tortured brain for a method more becoming the slime 
and filth of his rotten being. 

Well, so be it. We fight him back with his weapons, 
so on with the gas masks, it's only a bluff. He can't 
come himself in his poison — and he's coming, he's com- 
ing! 

It became a song in our hearts — "He's Coming ! He's 
Coming!" 

We began to brighten perceptibly. Instead of the 
earth rocking it became the gentle tossing of a lan- 
guorous, moonlit sea. We leaned our heads in genuine 
affection against the dirt sides of our little slit trench 
and began to marvel at its motherly shelter. How they 
could churn up the whole world and never drop one in ! 
Of course they could not drop one in. They had no 
brain, the swine. 

If a chemist could run them through a Pasteur filter, 
he would get a trace of intellectual process about the 
mental grade of the Pithecanthropus erectus ! 



That's it. He is shooting away his fireworks in the 
vain hope of something. Wonder what it is ! Anyway, 
he shot it away for eight hours on our support and re- 
serve lines, but at about 4 o'clock on the morning of the 
15th he lifted his general bombardment on the front 
line and started a rolling barrage, one hundred meters 
in three minutes. 

Behind it, almost hugging it, they came! 

God, weren't we glad to see the grayness of them! 

This was more like. Something we could see, feel and 
fight. And when we say they came we mean two di- 
visions of them. 

"When two divisions of German shock troops pile 
up on a regiment of American fighting men" — Do you 
remember what we told you ! 

Well ! they piled up, at first with excellent formation 
and a distribution of machine guns, as bumble bees 
distribute themselves after the small boy wallops their 
nest with his handful of switches — all over everywhere. 

On the river bank where they came in crowds, boats, 
and pontoon bridges, it was eye to eye, tooth to tooth, 
and hand to hand. It was a strange silence after the 
barrage had passed. The tack-tack-tack of m.achine 
guns, mounted and firing from boats as they came, and 
the clash of steel as the bayonets met sounded like a 
death stillness compared to it. 

The lines on the river were fought out completely. 
The barrage had not reached the railway bank and re- 
enforcements could not be sent to them. They paid the 
supreme price but the action delayed the enemy advance 
so that the organizations in depth could unlimber and 
meet the advance with the result as stated above — this 
is a story, not a requiem. 

Their barrage got away from them, an unpardonable 
crime in military science but humanly pardonable when 
one learns they thought it impossible to be met and 
fought on the river bank. 

Our line of resistance was the Metz-Paris Railway. 
The embankment' is some nine feet high with tiny slit 



trenches on the forward edge but not sufficiently for- 
ward to be on the military crest. When the Boche 
started their advance across the wheat fields interven- 
ing, some five hundred yards, this embankment became 
a living thing and American Springfields began to laugh 
in their faces. 

That wasn't fair. They had been assured with all 
German sangfroid that there would be no resistance 
after their barrage. But those were shock troops 
brought from afar with orders. *'To Paris. No 
Stop-overs." 

Though their brains became loose-leaf ledgers with 
no index and the Kaiser became a more ghostly figure, 
they were fighters. I should say, professional soldiers. 
So they came on. We admit they looked like the whole 
German army and we had to wonder if the little old 
Springfield would keep on laughing. We had been 
warned of a big offensive, but we did not know the 
Boche thought our front was like a city park, free for 
all. 

The Springfield did keep on laughing and after cov- 
ering about half the distance they were transformed 
from a soldiers' maneuver column into a German mili- 
tary omelet. However, their machine guns had in- 
filtrated through the high wheat and covered our front 
as flies cover spilled molasses. 

The rest hit the ground and continued their advance 
in a more becoming: manner, like a mole. They wrig- 
gled themselves, many of them to the very foot of the 
railway embankment, where they were safe from our 
fire for the above mentioned reason. They rested, then 
charged the crest, were hurled back ; rested, threw stick 
grenades and charged some more, but never success- 
fully, until the splendid heroes of that line joined their 
comrades of the river bank, joined them on that long 
journey to a land which knows no war. 

Then came the supporting troops from their imme- 
diate rear in a charge to which history will never do 
justice. They couldn't come before, as there is only 



room for a certain number to fight on the forward edge. 
To the Germans on the embankment the Kaiser must 
have taken on a more material aspect; they saw vis- 
ions of Paris, but visions only, which disappeared like 
mist in the sunshine. 

It was not sunshine that hit them. No. It was an 
earthquake. San Francisco one April morning of 1906 
had nothing on that shock which must have been felt 
back in the Reichstag. Bayonets, rifle butts, fists and 
teeth. Our boys in khaki were overwhelmed by num- 
bers in gray. 

But the McAlexander spirit; that is God-given and 
Heaven-sent ! 

The Colonel had said, "Let 'em come." Well, here 
they are, and God, the joy of it all ! 

Did you ever turn yourself loose in a mad passion 
that knew no limit? Were you ever blinded by blood 
and lust to kill and let yourself go in a crowd where you 
could feel their bodies crumble and sink to the depths 
below you, then brace yourself on them, and destroy, 
destroy, destroy? 

I hope not, but we did — and what do numbers amount 
to against spirit? In San Francisco the earthquake 
subsided and we were left to contemplate and ponder. 
There was no subsiding of these seismic demons of Col. 
Ulysses Grant McAlexander, once they had their or- 
ders. We were to hold that rail road. Did we hold it? 
Go down there and count the German graves. Six 
hundred before G Company alone. Ask the prisoners, 
pens of them, why they didn't fulfill their mission. 
They don't know just what happened, but whatever it 
was, it was awful, colossal. 

Sir, they did not even take the first line of resistance 
of the 38th. An officer, later captured, stated that only 
twelve of the 6th Grenadiers, the Kaiser's favorite 
Prussian shock troops, returned to their side of the 
Marne. 

Yes, back they went, and they stood not upon the 
manner of their going, although I will say their ma- 



chine guns covered their retreat to the limit of their 
ability. Without their usual "nest" arrangement they 
were comparatively easy picking for us. For instance, 
during the retreat Corporal Newell with his squad 
augmented by two men went down into the field and 
captured five guns, killing or capturing their crews. 

During the heat of battle one lone private (Bishop) 
crawled down the embankment through the wheat to 
the flank of a machine gun crew who were too busy on 
their front to know where his shots were com.ing from. 
He picked off seven Germans and dragged the gun 
back with him. Private Richardson, whose sobriquet 
was Eagiebeak — he looked so much like his illustrious 
origin of the funny pictures — he was so thin that only 
a great emergency made his uniform possible, joined in 
an attack upon a particularly troublesome machine gun. 
As we crossed bayonets his rifle was knocked from his 
hands. Undaunted, he threw himself upon the machine 
gunner, who was firing with his pistol, took it from him 
and killed him with it. Private Wilson, also losing his 
piece for the moment, met a charge with his bare fists 
flattening two of the enemy, regained his rifle and held 
his position. 

Corporal Salner continued firing from a prone posi- 
tion after part of his stomach had been shot away by 
five bullets. He saved our front line left flank by lustily 
shouting a warning against a niachine gun being set 
up directly on our line. 

Water-cart drivers, mess sergeants and cooks, joined 
their fighting units. The mess sergeant of Reid's Com- 
pany, after having both legs broken by small arms fire, 
made his men carry him to a new position where he 
continued operating a Chauchat automatic rifle until 
killed. 

Another mess sergeant crawled down into the field 
to rescue a comrade. Before starting he said, ''I don't 
suppose I'll make it in the face of this fire, but I'll try 
it for a Buddy." He was badly wounded. 

My water-cart driver, the littlest chap in the U. S. 



Army, killed a husky Prussian officer with a bayonet. 
These incidents are not typical, they are extraordinary, 
but they serve to illustrate the many, many remarkable 
individual feats of heroism of the 38th, under the stress 
of battle. 

No grander man lived than Lieut. Kenneth P. Mur- 
ray, killed in a flank attack which started in a line from 
the railway to the church in Mezy, drove in one hun~. 
dred and eighty-five prisoners, but from which only 
three returned, the company commander (my humble 
self) and two privates. Lieut. Mercer M. Phillips died 
on the railway with a blood dripping bayonet on the 
rifle in his hands. Lieut. David C. Calkins, whose 
troops blocked the enemy's progress at the river edge 
until the barrage passed and those in his support could 
get into action, was badly wounded and made prisoner. 

Many, many, other splendid souls, born leaders of 
brave men, joined the great majority with a smile on 
their lips and pistols empty. 

Lieut. Colonel Frank H. Adams, that great soldier 
with a lion's heart, and yet who led his command by 
an irresistible personal magnetism, by precept and ex- 
ample and never an unkind word — that big, handsome, 
he-fighter won the Distinguished Service Cross by 
standing in the way of a whole battalion, not one that 
he had any direct connection with, but one nearby that 
was practically routed by the shock the 38th stood and 
fought back. He brought comparative order out of 
chaos and succeeded in getting them into a support 
position. 

We could mention hundreds of great deeds by great 
men on that day, but this is a story of the 38th, not of 
the indomitable spirits that go to make it up, or we 
would never reach the end. 

At 10 o'clock, on the 15th, our front was fairly 
cleared and we were beginning to feel that it was a 
great day, when something else happened. Can you, 
who were not with us, imagine how a prohibitionist 



feels on a yachting party? Completely surrounded by 
hell and damnation and can't get off. 

The enemy had penetrated to our left like the boll 
weevil through a Southerner's cotton patch and forti- 
fied himself with minenwurffers, machine guns and 
barbed wire. They did not penetrate to our right. No, 
they simply walked over and wondered how much of a 
hike it was to Paris. We were then aware of the rea- 
son for "Feverish preparations on the part of the 
French on our right." 

Do you remember what we told you? We thought 
it was to fight, but evidently no such idea ever marred 
the sweet thoughts of the 131st. Say what you please, 
make any defense you like. They weren't there. And 
that's the business we have in hand just now. They 
weren't there. Whence they came or whither they went 
we know not. A. W. 0. L. most likely, but that is 
neither here nor there. 

On the morning of July 15, 1918, when Col. McAlex- 
ander was hurling battalion after battalion of the 38th 
into the Surmelin valley, the Gateway to Paris, and out- 
fighting, out-maneuvering, out-generaling the Kaiser's 
favorites, there were no friendly troops on our right 
where they had been on the evening of the 14th. 

However, thank God for a real soldier's instinct. The 
Colonel had anticipated and was prepared to meet a 
right flank attack. Good old Captain Reid was there to 
meet them when they tried to consolidate their line 
through our regiment. He met them first with rifle 
fire, then with the bayonet, and finally wtih butts. He 
fought them all over the ridge and down on every side 
except our side. He never let them set foot on our sec- 
tor of the Marne and though it cost him nearly his 
entire command he was there when fresher troops could 
get to him for relief. 

On the left we repulsed a heavy rear attack and a 
light flank attack with a handful of the most exhausted 
troops in France— old "G" Company reduced to fifty- 
two men from two hundred and fifty-one — ^taking up 



new positions and fighting off ten to one is a picture 
that will ever live in the memory of the 38th. 

Major Rowe made desperate efforts to reinforce, but 
the Boche, just at that place, had us under direct fire 
of Austrian 88's, German 77's, and one pounders. You 
know what direct fire means. Effective forces can't 
be sent against it, that's all. 

So, for three days we fought on our flanks, for three 
days the German high command gave us all they had in 
their desperation to open the gateway. The Colonel re- 
ceived an order. "Fall back if you think best." 

He answered, "Is it up to my decision ?" 

The answer: "Yes." 

The Colonel's answer: "Then I hold my lines!" 

God, what a world of torture and yet solace in that 
answer ! What a world of pain and joy ! We were shot 
to ribbons, cut to small sections, unfed, and oh, so tired ; 
but the drive would never have stopped once they con- 
solidated their lines through the 38th. 

It was Paris for them and a terrible defeat for us if 
we withdrew and gave them the little Surmelin valley. 
The Colonel had been studying the attack orders taken 
from captured German officers and knew as no one else 
knew what it meant to fall back. 

He was there for a soldier's purpose and did a sol- 
dier's duty. He paid an awful price, made sacrifices 
of officers and men that tore his heart to pieces. But 
he held the Gateway to Paris and not only that, drove 
them back across the Marne and FOLLOWED THEM 
ACROSS. 

Believe it or not, it was an absolute physical impos- 
sibility, but we went right on after them and fought 
them again at Jaulgonne — still nobody on our right, 
mind you — where for several days and several nights 
it steadily rained and where for the same length of 
time we hammered them with shot and bayonet until 
they fell back with such impetus that our next big bat- 
tle was at Fismes on the River Vesle. 

One soldier was heard to remark: "I don't see any 



more prisoners coming in. I wonder what can be the 
matter?" 

Second soldier : "Didn't you hear the Colonel say he 
had all the information he needed ?" 

There are not many of us left of the old 38th. There 
has been considerable talk in French circles about "Reg- 
iment d'elite," "unconquerable tenacity," and the like. 
Yes, our flag is to be decorated with the Croix de Guerre 
and it is generally recognized in high French command 
that "McAlexander's defense was peculiarly American 
in conception, plan and execution." You see we have 
been under French command and our deeds have not 
been recounted at home. All the glory goes to the High 
Command. 

Things like this though, we keep close to our hearts 

27 July, 1918. 

General Order 1 

( (From the Field.) 
To the Officers and Men of the 38th U. S. Infantry : 

The Colonel commanding the regiment wishes to 
praise you for the heroic manner in which you took 
your baptism of fire on July 15, 1918, upon the 
banks of the Marne. No regiment in the history 
of our nation has ever shown a finer spirit or per- 
formed a greater deed. 

Let us cherish within our hearts the memory of 
our fallen comrades. Salute them! Then FOR- 
WARD ! McAlexander. 

And look at this for an official report and try to re- 
member if in all history such a feat was ever before 
accomplished : 

Headauarters. 38th U. S. Infantry, 
A. P. 0. 740, France, 8 August, 1918. 
From: Coramanding Officer, 38th U. S. Infantry. 
To : The Adjutant General. U. S. Army. 

(Through Military Channels.) 
Subject: Capture of Prisoners from Three Ger- 
man Divisions. 



1. In the second battle of the Marne, July 15-23, 
1918, the 38th U. S. Infantry was attacked on the 
south bank of the Marne, July 15-18, by two Ger- 
man divisions, and it captured prisoners from each 
of their regiments, namely: 

10th Division 

6th Grenadiers Guards 

47th Infantry 

398th Infantry 
36th Division 

5th Grenadier Guards 

128th Infantry 

175th Infantry 

2. On July 22, 1918, this regiment attacked the 
10th Division Landwehr on the north bank of the 
Marne and captured prisoners from its three regi- 
ments namely : 

10th Division 
Landwehr 

372nd Infantry 
377th Infantry 
378th Infantry 

3. It is believed that the capture of prisoners 
from nine enemy regiments during nine days of 
battle constitutes a record justifying a report to 
the War Department. 

4. Identification of twenty-one separate and dis- 
tinct regimental and other units were secured from 
enemy positions in front of this regiment. 

U. G. McAlexander, 
Colonel, 38th U. S. Infantry. 
Col. Robert H. Kelton, Chief of Staff, made the most 
fitting remark of all. With his arm around the sturdy 
shoulders of Col. McAlexander, he said to Major Gen- 
eral Dickman, Commander of the 3rd Division : 
"General, this is The Rock of the Marne." 



•om address of Hon. C. N. 
gon, in Congress, May 1, 1920 : 

"It was at the Marne in September, 1914, that the 
French under Joffre turned back the German hordes in 
their mad dash toward Paris ; and it was at the Marne 
in July, 1918, on the selfsame ground that a single regi- 
ment of American infantrymen, with some aid from the 
artillery, once more stemmed the German tide and 
rolled it back in defeat, earning thereby for itself and 
its gallant colonel the proud title, The Rock of the 
Marne.* 



"World military annals report few feats that equal, 
and none that surpass, the deeds of the Thirty-eighth 
Regiment of Infantry under the command of CoL 
Ulysses Grant Mc Alexander in the Second Battle of the 
Marne. *0n this occasion,' says Commander in Chief 
John J. Pershing in his final report, *a single regiment 
of the Third Division wrote one of the most brilliant 
pages in our military annals. It prevented the cross- 
ing at certain points on its front, while on either flank 
the Germans who had gained a footing pressed forward. 
Our men, firing in three directions, met the German 
attacks with counterattacks at critical points and suc- 
ceeded in throwing two German divisions into complete 
confusion, capturing 600 prisoners.' 



"Need our schoolboys turn to Leonidas at Thermopy- 
lae or Miltiades at Marathon for tales of heroism after 
such a recital as this ? Surely the story of McAlexan- 
der and the Thirty-eighth at the Marne will find ita 
place in our histories alongside that of Jackson at New 
Orleans and Thomas, the 'Rock of Chickamauga.' " 



min^LSL CONGRES? 



020 915 395 6 



Published by 
UNIVERSITY PRESS 
Columbia. S. C. 



